Fire in the East by Harry Sidebottom Page A

talk. ‘As I am sure that you know, the Cohors XX Palmyrenorum Milliaria Equitata is a double-strength unit of archers, over one thousand men. It is a mixed unit, 960 infantry and 300 cavalry. What makes us unique in the army is our organization. The cohors has only six centuries of infantry and five turmae of cavalry, but all are at double strength. So we have 160 men not 80 in a century, and 60 not 30 cavalry in a turma. We have twenty men mounted on camels as well; mainly for messages and the like, although they are useful for scaring untrained horses - how horses do hate the smell of a camel, ha, ha.’ Ballista wondered at the mixture of obvious pride and extreme nervousness. The rapid flow of the centurion’s words stopped as it reached the line of soldiers.
    There were indeed sixty men in the turma of Cocceius. The troopers were dismounted, horses nowhere to be seen. The men were drawn up in a line thirty across and two deep. Their cavalry helmets and waist-length scale armour were brightly polished. Swords hung in scabbards on left hips. Combined quivers and bowcases poked over left shoulders. Right hands grasped spears and on each left forearm was strapped a small round shield painted with a picture of a warrior god. Above their heads the standard of the turma, a rectangular green signum, fluttered in the westerly breeze.
    Ballista took his time. He walked the lines, looking closely. The troopers were indeed well turned out. But they had had plenty of time to get ready. A parade was one thing, action quite another. He wondered if he detected a sullen, dumb insolence in the men’s faces - but possibly his stumble and the non-appearance of Scribonius Mucianus were making him oversensitive.
    ‘Very good, Centurion. Have the men had lunch?’ It was the eighth hour of daylight, nearly mid-afternoon. ‘No? Then let them be dismissed to their quarters. It is too late in the day to think of setting out to Antioch. We will march tomorrow. If we leave at dawn we should be there with plenty of time before nightfall. Isn’t that so?’
    Having been assured that his understanding was correct, Ballista announced that he would make his way up to the acropolis of the town to make sacrifice for the safe arrival of the ship.
    Assessing the defences of Seleuceia in Pieria under the cloak of honouring the gods was paradoxically depressing. The town was well fortified by nature. It had ravines on three sides and the sea close by on the fourth. It was well fortified by man. It had walls of fine ashlar masonry, with tall semicircular towers well placed at intervals. The great market gate on the road to Antioch was almost a fortress in itself. The only way up to the acropolis was by twisting and turning stairways cut steeply into the rock. It was eminently defendable. And yet, three years earlier, it had fallen to the Sassanids.
     
    The bathhouse attached to the new imperial fortress in Antioch was sumptuously decorated. Turpio thought it typical of the imperium Romanum these days that it was fully functioning while the fortress was unfinished. He was waiting in the corridor outside the apodyterium, the changing room. Under his feet was a mosaic typical of bathhouses all over the empire: a black attendant, a water vessel in each hand, a wreath of laurel on his head.
    Marcus Clodius Ballista, the new Dux Ripae, might rejoice in the three names which were the mark of a Roman citizen but he was a complete barbarian. On their ride into Antioch he had stared about him like a bumpkin. Turpio had lead him in by the bridge gate, through the town’s colonnaded streets, then over to the island in the Orontes where the new fortress was being built. Trust the present empire to send an imperial favourite - and a barbarian one at that - above a Roman who had worked his way through military service.
    Turpio looked again at the mosaic. An enormous penis escaped from under the attendant’s tunic. The artist had carefully detailed the bell-end in